Napoleon, who was a brilliant strategist, often told subordinates that they should treat the pope as if he had 200,000 men at arms. In other words, the answer to Stalin’s cynical remark”“How many divisions does the pope have?””was about ten, give or take, and they were extremely loyal and prepared to die… . Continue Reading »
Watching Roberto Clemente play baseball was to have seen the game at its best, but to have known him as a man, and appreciate him as a leader, was even better. Forty years after his death, in a tragic plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1972, Clemente’s stature only continues to grow. Born in Carolina, Puerto Rico on August 18, 1934, to Luisa and Melchor Clemente, Roberto was the youngest of seven siblings. … Continue Reading »
The careful reader of Genesis will notice an odd, countercultural pattern running throughout the book. Again and again, God privileges the younger son over the elder (Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over Reuben), a privileging that mirrors, and perhaps explains, God’s peculiar choice of Israel as his chosen people… . Continue Reading »
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a last-ditch legal challenge to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). Ten years ago that decision would have generated celebratory headlines and heated public debate. Instead, the news came and went with barely a whisper. Why did this issue age and fade so quickly? First, I’d submit, the public no longer believes the stem cell hype… . Continue Reading »
I normally avoid documentaries that use questionable methods of Bible interpretation to promote the gay lifestyle as both natural and normative. For the Bible Tells Me So (2007), however, was not so easy to dismiss. Directed and co-written by Daniel Karslake, this manipulative yet compelling, slanted yet challenging documentary presents us not only with the expected attempts to reshape the Bible on a modern/postmodern lathe, but with the powerful, heart-breaking stories of five Christian, church-going families who are forced to deal with the reality of having an “out-of-the-closet” son or daughter… . Continue Reading »
As the West goes ever faster through the process of de-Christianization, the Church approximates ever more the situation of the Church before Constantine, God’s people on earth challenging and converting the pagan culture and empire with which it was often at odds. Indeed, although we often think too romantically about it, the Church before Constantine endured persecutions great and small, official and unofficial, sporadic and sustained, local and universal… . Continue Reading »
Perhaps the most beloved of Christmas movies, Frank Capra’s sleeper classic It’s a Wonderful Life has inevitably become a target of seasonal, iconoclastic culture-warmongering. As Christmas approaches, essays crop up in media outlets baldly inverting the film’s moral universe, ripping George Bailey and small-town Bedford Falls, and even rehabilitating villainous Mr. Potter and the nightmare alternative reality of Pottersville… . Continue Reading »
The federal government paused at the edge of the fiscal cliff and decided to look before it leapt. Last week the Senate passed a compromise bill, which raised some taxes and postponed most discussion about spending cuts, and the House moaned and complained and finally decided to pass the bill too. Then President Obama had his autopen sign the bill into law, as he headed back to Hawaii to finish his Christmas vacation… . Continue Reading »
The Supreme Court’s decision to hear arguments about the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8 guarantees that the debate over marriage will be at the forefront of American public life for the foreseeable future. DOMA defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman for purposes of federal law (it says nothing about what states may or may not define as marriage)… . Continue Reading »
In his weekly column at the Washington Post, Marc A. Thiessen, a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, recently offered an interesting appreciation of Barack Obama, surprising in its suggestion that his Republican friends be more like our extremely driven, results-oriented president. He writes … Continue Reading »
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